Not the post you were expecting but the post I created quite early on the morning of August 8th.

Because the question just appeared and lingered, refusing to go away. Past dreams reappeared oh so lovingly.

What is the nature of Evil and, if you are a Leftist, is there actual Evil in any event?

Many Leftists would insist no such thing exists. There is simply the misunderstood person who needs nothing more than your good will and acceptance.

They would insist that the act can somehow be separated from the individual.

I say that is naivete, ignorance and wrongheadedness on a stellar level. I say that some people exist in the world as nothing but examples of what not to do and whom to outright kill. There are persons in this world who are broken beyond any form of what most of us would consider a modicum of redemption.

I myself wholly believe in the existence and prosperity of Evil. I have viewed it, seen its wastes, smelled its stench in the night, known people who canonized its name, seen its carrion-strewn carcasses, looked it directly in the eye and understood when it wished to kill me.

A very brief smattering of the innumerable cases I handled:

– A mother smothered her child by putting her head in a Ziploc bag; she left the child in her crib, called to schedule a nail appointment. The child, sick, kept her from a bowling appointment and a prior nail appointment. We found her stirring soup on a stove with a dead baby in the other room.

– A high schooler, angry at having been fired from a pizza job, returned with a gun and robbed the store, shooting his once-best friend because “he should have quit after I was fired, if he was my friend.” In the interview, he was not to blame because “the doctors should have done a better job saving him.”

– A couple had decided to split up; in the process of determining who received what, an argument ensued over who owned the batteries in the TV remote. One spouse shot the other in the neck and then removed the batteries from her dead hand. The pulsing arterial spray hit the white apartment wall from a distance of 5 feet away.

– As he had lost face and was losing control of the relationship because his wife was suddenly making more money than he, a former star collegiate football player from an incredibly successful and heavily-monied family (and an obsessive-compulsive neat/control freak) peaked one night when his son would not be quiet. He struck his 5-year-old on the head, caving in his skull and killing him. His pregnant wife walked in seconds later and observed the scene. She too was killed as was the fetus. To obviate his guilt he doused all the bodies with gasoline and lighted them all on fire, blaming an unknown and unseen assailant.

— A young man who had killed six people in two days, Eric Royce Leonard, three at a pizza restaurant and three later at a convenience store, asked me if people would try to hurt him as he was being booked into the jail because, after all, it was all about him.

— Another man, Richard Trenton Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento, killed six people in two months. I was tasked with using video for the first time in my department’s history. At a victim’s home I captured video of a half-eaten baby in a crib.

These little gems keep me up at night when the Brain Theater decides to pull aside its dark curtains as I sleep.

Like tonight.

BZ